I was having coffee with a friend of mine this week. We were talking about organizational structure, growth and how to build a great team and a great organization. He is at the top of his organization and needs to create space in his schedule to work on the Important and Not Urgent tasks. In other words, work ON the business, not IN the business. We talked about the four buckets of where you invest your time;

Important and Urgent – Generally customer or team issues, these need immediate attention and focus and take precedence over all other activities.
Not Important and Urgent – These are generally time wasters – E-mails, small talk, people that interrupt for minor issues.
Not Important and Not Urgent – Surfing the internet, goofing off, you interrupting other people fall into this category! Important and Not Urgent – Strategy, Corporate Development, Planning, Investing in the…

Knowing the most effective way to start a sales training initiative for your business is an important part of the sales process.

However, knowing how NOT to start a sales training initiative may provide your business with more insight.

With what not to do in mind, here are the don’ts of starting a sales training initiative:

Rely on One-Time Training Sessions

If you think your sales staff can absorb everything there is to know about your business’s sales initiatives in one shot, think again.

Although large corporations swear by one-time training sessions, they simply don’t always work. This is especially the case when the session involves multiple staff members and multiple sales areas.

Instead of trying to save time and money by having a one-time, all-inclusive sales training session, instead spread that training over half a dozen or more sessions. Your soon-to-be sales members will be able to absorb more…

Development in 2015 is turning out to be as hot as ever and doesn’t show any sign of slowing down for another year at least. Currently we are tracking 335 projects and almost 100,000 units in the development pipeline for Greater DFW. Almost 84,000 of those units are on the Greater Dallas side.

Of course, that is with the caveat that not all projects get developed. However, we are tracking over 33,000 units in the greater Dallas area already under some form of active construction and/or lease-up and half of those units are already leasing. At this time last year there were about 27,000 units in construction and/or lease up with about half of those leasing.

We are projecting almost 15,000 more units will start breaking ground in the last half of 2015 and another 7,700 units will start leasing. Construction start commitments taper off in 2016 but it is still quite early and with 25,000 units in the planning stage many of those will assuredly break ground in 2016.

Last summer we saw heavy lease-up activity in Las Colinas, Uptown and Midtown; this year we are seeing more activity in the Frisco/Colony, Downtown and Richardson/East Plano sub-markets.

Next year may be even hotter in lease-ups. Over 11,500 new units will come on the market in the first half of 2016.

Fortunately, the DFW market has been able to absorb the newer units at a pretty good pace and there is no reason to think that the market can’t continue to perform well in the next several quarters.

While the energy sector is still under-performing, it doesn’t seem to have a large effect on occupancies and rents — in this market at least. Residential real estate remains tight and by some accounts overvalued. This will make renting much more viable.

Still, with the urban center running out of development space and many more projects underway in the outlying areas, it still remains to be seen if the ‘millennial shift’ to renting can fully translate to the suburban parts of the metroplex.